


We'll Figure That Out When We Get There

by sterlinglee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Datekou, Gen, Humor, Team Dynamics, very minor warning for bullying/intimidation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 08:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2461472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlinglee/pseuds/sterlinglee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moniwa runs into a little trouble at the train station, and Datekou tries to help more enthusiastically than is really necessary.  The question of who saves whom from what may actually be beside the point, but this much is clear: the Iron Wall is a full-time occupation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Figure That Out When We Get There

  
Kamasaki tried to shove the empty snack bag into the overhead rack, and missed. His knuckles bounced off the metal frame with a painful-sounding _clank_ , but he kept on glaring down at Futakuchi as he shoved uselessly at the bag.

“I can’t believe we’re already out of protein bars,” he griped. “Did you guys just go for them the minute we left the station?”

“Don’t look at me like that, Aone had the last one. Last three.” Futakuchi shrugged, unconcerned, and Aone turned a baleful betrayed eye on him from above.

“Who needs that many, seriously? You sure you’re not part bear, Aone?”  


“Picking on your underclassmen for having healthy appetites? That’s real bitter, Kamasaki-san, and frankly I’m a little embarrassed for you—” Moniwa swatted the back of Futakuchi’s head, and he died down with a rebellious little grumble. Kamasaki still looked like he wanted to start something, though, so as the train rounded a turn Moniwa got up and hip-checked him back into his seat.  
  
“We’re almost at the station, so hang in there, guys,” Moniwa told them. Unspoken was the plea: _we’ve made it this far without causing a public disturbance, so don’t blow it now._ “I have some extra snacks in my bag, if you guys are okay with sesame—”  
  
“Uh, sorry,” Obara cut in, leaning around from Moniwa’s other side. “Me and Sakunami kinda ate those. We both overslept and missed breakfast.”  
  
Moniwa looked down at him. After a moment he took his seat again, shut his eyes briefly, and opened them. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, if that’s how it is.” His voice did not rise above the level appropriate for holding private conversations on the train, but somehow everybody managed to hear him. “We can probably get some more food at the station, so—just try and focus on something else right now, okay?”  
  
He gave Aone a meaningful look, which Aone interpreted and passed on to Kamasaki and Futakuchi in the form of a less eloquent but much more to-the-point glare. Futakuchi rolled his eyes, and Kamasaki slid down in his seat with a gusty sigh.  
  
Twenty minutes later, the train pulled into the station. The few people waiting under the electronic signs backed up quickly as Datekou’s players spilled out onto the open air-platform, stretching long limbs and jostling one another and thinking even more pointedly about food than usual. Almost as one, they turned towards the convenience store down the way, which was nearly abandoned in the light of early afternoon.  
  
“We’re gonna get the cops called on us if we go in there all together,” Sasaya observed, as an old woman with a sack of groceries found herself stranded in Aone’s shadow and hurried to get somewhere where she could see the sun. Aone ducked his head in silent agreement, and Moniwa dug for his wallet.  
  
“Just wait here and text me if Coach gets here with the bus,” he instructed. “I’ll run over and see what they have. No—Sasaya, I _know_ you don’t like fruit snacks, you don’t have to remind me every time. I’ll be back in just a sec.”  
  
That was what he said, but he spent several more seconds weaving and hovering as if he wanted to set them up like dolls in the safest possible configuration before going off and leaving them unattended. Sasaya shooed him away and then draped himself over a bench in the sun.  
  
Aone shuffled back under the canopy of the station, toes on the line between sun and shadow. He rolled his shoulders idly, stretched, and watched a pair of chasing sparrows dart between the rafters overhead. Futakuchi leaned against the wall next to him and hummed a sports drink jingle under his breath.  
  
It was Aone who saw it first. He happened to glance down the platform into the clean, bright interior of the convenience store, and his momentary calm vanished. Moniwa had made his purchases, but before he could get to the door he had been cornered by three older guys who kept cutting him off as he tried to sidle away.  
  
Aone’s feet were moving almost before he had processed what he was seeing, and he tugged at Futakuchi’s shoulder. He could probably go over there and break it up himself, but there was no question that when someone needed menacing, he and Futakuchi had to go and do it together.  
  
Futakuchi turned easily at his touch, about to ask what he wanted, but he fell silent when he followed Aone’s pointing finger. They shared a glance, wordless but in perfect accord. And then they were in step together, picking up their pace—Futakuchi reached out and shoved Kamasaki lightly as they passed, which hadn’t been part of the plan but damned if they were stopping to hash out logistics now.  
  
“Hey, what’s your problem—” Aone pointed. Kamasaki looked. Moniwa had been backed up against the magazine display by the guy in the ugly hat, and the one with the green shirt was gesturing brazenly in his face. The one wearing sunglasses was between him and the door. Moniwa took another step back, bumped the magazine display, and stared in dismay as a stack of horoscope booklets cascaded to the floor.  
  
All of a sudden they had to trot to keep up with Kamasaki, who was several strides ahead of them with a vein leaping in his forehead and Sasaya’s wrist going white in his grip. Sasaya stumbled after him, blinking sleepily and scrubbing a hand over his eyes, but Kamasaki shoved him around in front as they approached the shop, and abruptly all the bleariness fled from his face.  
  
It turned out the door was only wide enough for one person at a time. Sasaya opened it and the shop bell dinged cheerfully, but then Kamasaki decided he wanted to be in front after all, and there was a moment in which Aone envisioned them spending the rest of the school year jammed together in the doorway, living off of bottled tea and curry in plastic trays. Then Sasaya solved things by going limp and letting Kamasaki muscle past him. Aone followed his upperclassmen in, and Futakuchi brought up the rear.  
  
“Look,” Moniwa was saying to Ugly Hat and Shades, “I don’t want any trouble, okay?” Aone guessed that the extent to which Moniwa did not want trouble was probably one of those constants of the known universe, like gravity, that was locked in constant opposition to the forces of entropy and Futakuchi’s fat mouth and that face Kamasaki made at total strangers when he thought they had looked at him funny.  
  
Familiar footsteps sounded behind him, and, unsurprised, he shuffled over to let Obara, Sakunami, and the others make themselves known. It felt _right_ to have them there—Datekou’s players, on the whole, were accustomed to grouping so close that they blotted out the light.  
  
“Hey, is there a problem here? Did our good captain insult your honor or something?” Futakuchi spoke up, at his most strident and bright. Aone glanced at him, and saw something hard in the set of his jaw.  
  
Moniwa had been staring fixedly at the opposite wall, where a colorful sign advertised a two-for-one deal on strawberry chocolate ice cream bars. Now his carefully neutral gaze unstuck and fell upon the assembled Iron Wall.  
  
His eyebrows shot up as if attempting to achieve liftoff, but, as was his strong suit, he quickly compressed his shock into the look of a person who no longer has it in him to be surprised at the world he lives in. _Of course,_ said his eyebrows, giving up their fleeting ambition. _This is the way it works, after all._ His mouth thinned into a wary line and he tightened his grip on his shopping bag.  
  
“He’s just some asshole holding up the line, does it look like any of your business?” Green Shirt snapped, rounding on Futakuchi and appearing to make some very quick recalculations once he saw what he was dealing with. Aone and his teammates watched with some interest as Green Shirt, Ugly Hat, and Shades all realized that, a) Futakuchi sounded like a brat but was really kind of tall, and, b) Datekou had guys that made him look short.  
  
Futakuchi gave them a meltingly insincere smile. Behind him, Aone concentrated his efforts and loomed diligently. Kamasaki yanked against the hold that a scowling Sasaya had on him, and all the other players all seemed to shuffle a little and get taller. Green Shirt stepped back, probably under the direction of the scared monkey deep in the back of his brain, and then looked surprised at himself.  
  
“Guys,” said Moniwa. Nobody heard him, so he said it again, louder. “Come on— _guys._ ” The old tremor in his voice was vanishing fast. He was beginning to look like someone who didn’t want trouble but had managed to become very well acquainted with it anyway. “I got what I came for, so let’s not let things get out of hand.”  
  
“Out of _hand_?” Kamasaki growled, straining against Sasaya’s arm. “These guys don’t know who they’re messing with, I’m gonna—”  
  
The problem with trying to rescue Moniwa Kaname, Aone reflected later, was that he had too many finely honed instincts and reflexes designed to work in the exact opposite direction. That was just how nature worked, or something, and maybe there was no use trying to fight it. “It’s—I don’t know, just some captain thing,” Futakuchi said, when he tried to mention it. But Aone figured that was just him trying to cover his embarrassment at what happened next.  
  
What happened next was this: Kamasaki pulled free of Sasaya’s grip, Sasaya stopped pretending he didn’t want to hit someone as badly as Kamasaki did, Aone continued to stand there, and Futakuchi opened his mouth to say something that would probably keep Green Shirt, Shades, and Ugly Hat awake late into the night, tortured by feelings of inadequacy and shame.  
  
In the face of this oncoming disaster, panic wiped Moniwa’s mind blank. He forgot all but the most important fact of the situation at hand: namely, that he was the captain.  
  
As Futakuchi drew breath and Kamasaki wound up, he lunged forward and planted himself bodily in front of his fellow third-years with his arms spread. He slapped the hand that wasn’t on Kamasaki’s chest over Futakuchi’s mouth, and once he’d run out of limbs he leveled a make-my-day glare at the rest of the team.  
  
There was a thoughtful silence, in which Ugly Hat and Shades considered the situation and began to back away slowly, as if they thought volleyball players were the kind of wild animal that makes up for its many rows of terrible teeth and claws by being conveniently shortsighted.  
  
“C—come on now, I think that’s enough,” said Moniwa, muffled by Kamasaki’s shoulder. He made a quick shuffling hop to keep Sasaya from getting around him and nearly lost his balance. His ears were red, and he was radiating a kind of mortified frustration that made everybody feel a little clammy all of a sudden.  
  
“Mmph aa ugh aaah,” Futakuchi commented, and Moniwa glanced at his own muffling hand in surprise. After a moment he removed it.  
  
“We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt,” he said vaguely, examining his hand and then wiping it on his slacks.  
  
“What do you mean, _we_ ,” Futakuchi said. Aone covered his mouth again.  
  
“Can you get off my foot?” Sasaya ventured. “My circulation—you know.”  
  
“Promise not to hit anyone first,” Moniwa told him promptly.  
  
“Promise.”  
  
“Fingers _un_ crossed! You too, Kamasaki.”  
  
They showed him their hands, and after a brief but penetrating stare he stepped back and unpeeled his clenched fingers one by one from the front of Kamasaki’s shirt. Kamasaki fiddled self-consciously with his school tie, and, in the absence of anything else to do with his hands, put them in his pockets.  
  
“You kids need to get on out of here if you’re not buying,” someone snapped, and they turned as one to face the weary stare of the middle-aged woman behind the register. “You think we don’t have security cameras? Come on, move it.”  
  
Moniwa bobbed his head in her direction. Green Shirt opened his mouth to say something, and thought better of it. He, Ugly Hat, and Shades froze as Moniwa turned to look at them.  
  
“It’s a good thing we’re just passing through,” Moniwa told them, with terrible politeness.  
  
“Damn right,” Kamasaki growled, and then the moment was gone and Moniwa’s face fairly steamed with embarrassment. He turned and snagged Kamasaki by the sleeve and hauled him out of the store with the rest of the team in tow.  
  
Aone brought up the rear. He wanted to smile because he could hear Moniwa hissing something to his teammate that sounded like _‘not your mother, so help me God,’_ —but there was an image to maintain. He took one last look, stone-faced, at the unfortunate souls Moniwa had rescued from Datekou, and then the glass door shut with a bright little jingle behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> i surface briefly from the tar pit that is higher education to hit you with this absurdity. if moniwa's facial expressions in ch 126 didn't make your heart grow three sizes and then collapse in on itself and shrink to a single dark point of irresistible gravity that consumes all light then what is the _point_


End file.
